


Strike by Night

by Face_of_Poe



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Canon Era, Deception, Gen, George Washington's Infamous Temper, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Manhandling, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Underage, Past Underage Exploitation, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 22:51:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13937106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Face_of_Poe/pseuds/Face_of_Poe
Summary: The general’s ill temper was something of legend, of hushed rumors among the men after a rout by the British, an unforeseen calamity, an unbearably useless letter from Congress when it seemed the army was holding on by little more than taut threads of hope woven between their collective despair and misery.Alexander had never fully bought it.(*see notes re: tags & archive warnings*)





	Strike by Night

**Author's Note:**

> ***Note about archive warnings***  
> It's not the focus and not depicted, but there's a brief discussion towards the end about a past underage sexual exploitation situation, for which I have also bumped the fic from a T to an M rating just to be safe.

The general’s ill temper was something of legend, of hushed rumors among the men after a rout by the British, an unforeseen calamity, an unbearably useless letter from Congress when it seemed the army was holding on by little more than taut threads of hope woven between their collective despair and misery. 

Alexander had never fully bought it. A story encouraged by the commanders to inspire loyalty and bravery amongst the troops. He had seen His Excellency at his lowest guard, perhaps more than anyone in camp besides Tench, had listened carefully through his impassioned rants, that he might pick out the important bits and craft them into a poignant correspondence.

Staring now though from across the small room, frozen into place by an icy glare, he realized there was a yet-unseen layer of the general’s ire, a fury that transcended his outbursts of frustration and rendered him cold and hard instead, rendering the subject of that fearsome expression paralyzed in turn.

John’s eyes darted between them, sensing the cataclysm but yet ignorant to its true depths. Wise enough though to see his friend had done something well and truly stupid, he attempted to deflect some of the general’s immediate attention. “Your Excellency -”

“Out, Laurens,” Washington barked.

John blanched. “Alex…”

“That’s an order, Colonel!”

There was a quick scramble for his coat, that he might throw it on over his insufficient night clothes. With a last questioning look at his bunkmate, he slipped out the door.

Washington slammed it behind him, prompting Alexander out of his paralysis enough to flinch back at the noise. He waited, hardly daring to breathe, as the general rubbed at his forehead. “What,” he breathed, “in _God’s name_ were you thinking, Alexander?”

“I was -”

“The question was rhetorical, Colonel, for once in your life, keep _quiet_.” His mouth snapped closed and his gaze dropped to the floor. “It is all too readily apparent that you were not thinking at all. Do you have any inkling of the position you would put me in, should anyone else have discovered your… your little _tryst_ just now?”

“You’d be forced to drum me out, send me away from your camp and your side in disgrace.”

“Or I’d be within rights to have you hanged.”

A heavy beat of silence fell between them. Alexander bit his tongue, hard, trying to stave off the attempt to explain, to justify…

“Is that what - ?”

…“There’s a British outpost not fifteen miles down the road, General, if word of the scandal reached them ahead of my expulsion, then -”

“Goddammit, Hamilton,” Washington roared, sweeping a hand out to upend the small table at John’s bedside. The lamp crashed to the floor, glass shattering, precious little bit of remaining oil oozing lazily across the wood. “Was I not clear in my instruction to drop such foolish notions?”

“Due respect, sir,” he met the general’s eyes doggedly, determined, “you simply said that _you_ would not take part in such unholy schemes and deceptions, and -”

“And when have you ever known me to be so circumspect about my meaning, young man?” Alexander’s jaw tightened. “No, your defiance in this is willful. Ever the martyr you aspire to be.” His look turned considering, scornful. “But you would have kept me out of it; waited to stage your _scandal_ until I was due to meet with Congress next month. Did not anticipate being interrupted tonight in the baron’s quarters, begging the question of what, precisely, your purpose was there in this…” his eyes swept down Alexander’s form, his rumpled nightshirt, hastily-tied breeches, bared feet... “indecent state.”

Another terse silence fell, stretched on long enough that Alexander dared raising his gaze back to his commander, found him staring expectantly and – oh. He was awaiting an answer.

A red flush crept up his neck, on full display in his collarless shirt sans cravat. “Sir, I… I couldn’t…”

“You think Congress isn’t aware of von Steuben’s moral deficiencies? They look the other way because we are _desperate_ , Alexander, but that tolerance will not extend to him corrupting the Continental Army’s promising young officers, I can guarantee you that.” Alexander pressed his lips together into a thin line. “Did the baron order you to his bed?”

His head snapped up, eyes wide. “ _No_. Sir, I don’t… he can’t… I don’t take orders from Baron von Steuben. Regardless.”

“Apparently you don’t take orders from _me_ either, Colonel,” Washington snapped, and Alexander felt himself visibly withering. “I can trust neither an aide nor a secretary if I cannot be confident that my orders are to be obeyed. What good are you to me, then?”

And before he could rein in the words… “The point would have been rather moot, sir, as I’d have most assuredly been forced from the camp before any returning correspondence from yourself could put a halt to the proceedings, if Colonel Burr’s prior determination to rid the place of any such inappropriate relations among the men is any indication.”

The wordless fury with which Washington stalked towards him was wholly more frightening than the rage that had caused the demise of the oil lamp moments prior. He reached out a hand, and Alexander had just enough time to brace against an incoming strike before it seized his upper arm in a vise-like grip instead and hauled him several paces towards the writing desk that sat by the fireplace, where Alexander could warm his feet while he composed the general’s missives.

He’d left several such letters arrayed on the desktop to dry when he departed for the baron’s room; he had only time to hope that the ink had fully set before he was turned and forced unceremoniously down on the parchment, cheek pressed hard into the unforgiving wood by a hand gripped firmly at the base of his queue. The general’s other arm pinned both of his own behind his back, his shoulders straining painfully.

A wet gasp escaped him. He instinctively fought the hold but had not the leverage, pinned at the neck, the middle of his back by the forearm that held his own in a violent grip, by the far larger form of the general crowding him against the desk.

He forced himself to stillness, fought against the pain in his arms, but was not released. “Sir?” he whispered, willing away the heated pinpricks at the corners of his eyes.

“Cast aside whatever romantic notions of heroism and martyrdom that continuously lead you and Laurens, and even the marquis, into spots of trouble,” Washington murmured evenly above him, grip unrelenting. “This is not one you would escape from. If – _if_ – Mulligan’s report is true, that this General Harris is a brilliant strategist come to Philadelphia to take charge against my forces, and _if_ von Steuben is right, that he suffers from an ungodly attraction to pretty, young men, and _if_ you could somehow charm your way into his presence and into his bed, it _still wouldn’t matter_. He’d be too smart to trust what you have to say, too smart to let slip important information in your presence. He might enjoy what you offer, for a time, or he might take it freely at his pleasure, for what fight could you put up against him and the host of men at his call?”

The spike of humiliation at the demonstrable truth of those words, the sharp scent of ink as his face was held firm against the desk, the pain starting to numb in his overstressed arms – the tears finally spilled over, and he watched in a sort of dull fascination as the first one dripped onto the parchment beneath and blurred the date on the report meant for General Sullivan.

“He might hang you as a rebel,” Washington continued quietly. “Or – worst of all, perhaps – you might be deemed too irrelevant to take any bother. Left in exile from the army you have given your all to, these past two years. Or punished not as a traitor to the crown, but as a sodomite, exported to some forgotten spot in the Caribbean with the thieves and the whores, left to find your way in a strange, new land alongside the scoundrels and riffraff of the British Empire.”

He started, jerked against the hold still pinning him; and then he laughed.

“Something you find amusing, Hamilton?”

Couldn’t even shake his head – just laughed hysterically until the grip as his nape loosened, laughed through the hitch of pain when his arms were released, forced his palms up to the desktop but remained there, hunched over, waiting for the sharp tingling of restored blood-flow to pass.

“Alexander?”

Laughed as the tears came more readily and he finally managed to push himself back upright and wiped at his face, a faint dark tinge to the moisture on his cheeks telling him that he had not escaped unscathed from the ink on his letters.

“M’sorry, sir,” he finally got out, letting some of his long-forgotten Creole accent slip back into his voice, so finely-honed since his arrival in New York five years ago. “I couldn’t possibly bear a fate so terrible as _that_.” He reached for a loose kerchief on the other side of the desk and slipped past the general’s overbearing form, slumped down on the edge of his cot and began scrubbing at the mess that must be his face.

Washington watched him quietly for a long minute. A quick glance up showed his creased brows, a twinge of something new in his stern face – not guilt, not quite, but perhaps regret, and a trace of confusion. “Alex,” he said quietly at last, crossing the small space to reach out a hand and halt the frantic scrubbing of the dry cloth against his face. “Stop, you’ll do more harm than good.”

“So it seems to go.”

That time, the flash of guilt was unmistakable, and quickly concealed as the general turned away to grab the water pitcher from the mantle. He plucked the cloth from Alexander’s hands and dipped it into the water, set about wiping away the lingering smudges of ink with an efficiency that brooked no protest. “I could not do this without you, Alex. I need you _here_.”

“Did you really never bother to inquire as to my origins, my family?”

The hand stilled at his face, and Washington peered down into his eyes, curious, probing. “I learned enough from Knox. That you were a prodigious student, studying law; that you were first in line for the militia, when the time came; that your bravery and intelligence put you at the head of your own company, and that your men were unfailingly loyal.” His lips quirked. “It’s been obvious from the start that if you had any prominent family connections, you were unwilling to rely on their recommendation for advancement.” 

A humorless chuckle escaped Alexander, and he ducked back from the careful grooming and rested his forehead in one hand. “My mother died when I was twelve; what little inheritance she had to offer was passed to her first, _legal_ son. The cousin who took me and my other bastard brother in killed himself soon thereafter. A carpenter apprenticed my brother, and I’ve not seen him since; my dead mother’s landlord gave me a job doing books for a trade firm, and a cot in the back office to keep me from sleeping on the streets. He left his son in charge when business took him away – I was thirteen the first time his son accepted coin from one of the sailors passing through in exchange for my _company_.”

Pained understanding flashed across the general’s face. “Oh, my boy…”

“I don’t know if he was a cast-out, or simply half-mad from long bouts at sea,” Alexander plowed on recklessly, gaze fixed determinedly at the ground. “All he wanted was a warm body to… to _rut_ against,” he spat. “And when I tried to tell my boss’s son, thinking the sailor had forced his way into the office – he laughed. Said that was the use of pretty young desk clerks, and especially orphaned, bastard whore-sons.”

“And thus your firm aversion to the repeated offers to make you a general’s staff officer,” Washington deduced softly.

Pained embarrassment flashed across Alexander’s face. “Oh God, sir, that’s not… I would never expect that you’d… didn’t mean to _imply_ such a -”

“It’s okay, Alex.” Fingertips touched his chin lightly, drew his gaze up. “You are not to blame for the misfortunes providence chose to lay at your feet as a boy; nor do those misfortunes make you expendable now.”

“I… Thank you, sir.”

“Nor,” a shade of sternness entered his voice once more, “do they grant you leniency in your conduct this night. My orders are _not_ a matter for interpretation towards whatever fanciful end presently suits you.”

Hot flush suffusing his face, he swallowed thickly and mumbled a quiet, “Yes, sir,” and then averted his gaze back to the floor as soon as Washington lowered his hand.

Washington rose to his feet; Alexander remained sitting on the cot, perhaps not an ideal display of proper decorum, but suddenly and all-too keenly cognizant of his underdressed state, his mussed hair half-out of its queue, the irritated spot on his cheek where he’d furiously scrubbed at the ink from his letters.

“Then we shall speak no more on this matter.” A heavy exhale escaped him – relief, or something close to it. “Get some rest, Alex – as ever, an impossible workload awaits us all at first light.” 

A softly repeated, “Yes, sir,” barely left his lips before the door closed behind Washington with a sharp snap.

 

x---x

 

John had the good grace to let Alexander pretend to be asleep when he finally returned nearly an hour after Washington left. But as they hastily traded in bedclothes for uniforms the next morning, desperate to avoid the chill on bare skin any longer than strictly necessary, he finally cocked a curious brow across the room. “So – what did _you_ do to raise the general’s ire more than usual last night?”

A question he prepared for during his restless hours awake: “Creative interpretation of orders,” he answered lightly, and with just enough bite in his tone to suggest the matter best be dropped.

_We shall speak no more on this matter_ , Washington had said, and in the breaking light of day, Alexander couldn’t deny his fervent agreement with that course of action. 

Of course, he ought have realized that Washington intended just one more conversation on the subject upon his departure the night prior. But if no one else saw fit to notice or comment upon the uncharacteristic chill between His Excellency and Baron von Steuben over breakfast, well –

Alexander certainly saw no need to bring it up.

**Author's Note:**

> I believe this was actually the first thing I ever wrote for the Hamilton fandom nearly a year ago, but it was an incomplete scene envisioned for a larger story which I threw over for another project.  
> All the thanks to **aidennestorm** for convincing me that this scene stood just fine on its own and to **dreamlittleyo** for convincing me to finally finish the damn thing. :D


End file.
